WHAT: Hockney to HodgkinWHERE: New Orleans Museum of ArtWHEN: Through Aug. 31

At the outset, the idea of British prints from the more or less recent past
sounds a little standoffish. Prints, after all, are traditionally regarded as
cooler and dryer than other media, and the Brits, for their part, are not known
for being passionate about much beyond dogs, tepid beer and certain sorts of
amplified guitar music. So the whole notion of a British print show sounds, at
least initially, like a double dose of Sominex.

And, in fact, this is a rather dispassionate exhibit. After all, any show in
which David Hockney is the apex on the emotional Richter scale is not exactly
going to galvanize the masses. On the other hand, there are some surprises here
that make it well worth seeing. Surprises in the form of pop art from the
early 1960s, when pop not only was in full flower in Swinging London but
had been for almost a decade before Andy Warhol started showing his advertising
art in galleries under the pop banner. It has even been implied that it was
really the British who devised pop art in the first place, although this is
hardly a matter of universal consensus. (Jasper John's proto-pop American
Flag painting dates way back to 1954, after all.)

Lacking the juicy sensuality of the French, the Italians or even the Spanish,
the Brits have historically opted for wry humor in lieu of hormones. (Swinburne
for Baudelaire, Tom Jones for Don Juan, and so on.) And because pop art is,
after all, a pretty sarcastic idiom when you get right down to it, Swinging
London and pop seemed a perfect fit. In fact, London went pop long before it
ever thought of becoming hip or swinging.

Actually, pop art in Britain began as a kind of cabal among a group of London
designers associated with the Institute for Contemporary Arts around 1953.
Inspired by the mass media, they used commercial art as a starting point for
their investigations into the effect of advertising and consumer culture on the
public mind. Their work, along with some later arrivals, forms the basis for
this show. Taken from London's Roland-Geist collection and NOMA's own ample
print archives, it conveys something of London's typically wry pop
sensibilities from 1960 to 1980. And, like a Bombay gin martini, it may be
something of an acquired taste.

Personally, I found it gratifying to see Eduardo Paolozzi's colorful prints
once again. A Scotsman despite his Italianate appellation, Paolozzi was one of
the original pop conspirators from early on. Although David Hockney and
Howard Hodgkin get top box office billing, a close look at art history suggests
that Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton were more influential from the start. And if
most pop is about as superficial as the ad art on which it is based, Paolozzi's
quirky ideas and even quirkier techniques convey multiple layers of
meanings.

Paolozzi's work -- including his As Is When suite -- is among the most
influential
of the British print masters.

Wittgenstein in New York is a leading image in his mid-1960s silkscreen
suite titled As Is When. A busy mix of dayglo colors, terse forms and
precisely patterned geometry, this is really a witty "celebration" of 20th
century modernism in general. The Wittgenstein in the title was Ludwig
Wittgenstein, a pioneer of the symbolic linguistic logic that eventually led to
computer language, and As Is When refers to the time and space warps
that occur when language is restructured along the lines of higher math. It is
no coincidence that Paolozzi's design schemes often bear an eerie resemblance
to computer circuit boards.

Yet he was also a master of complex colored patterns that appear to pulsate
with hallucinogenic energies. Impersonal yet stimulating, Paolozzi's work not
only foreshadowed postmodernism but psychedelic art as well. And what with the
recent vogue in Wittgenstein, it is hard to believe that this series dates from
1964. Roughly speaking, Paolozzi was to the print medium what Pink Floyd was to
popular music.

Another proto-postmodern artist from 1960s London is Robyn Denny, whose
Paradise Suite and Light of the World silkscreens presaged Peter
Halley and the neo-geo craze of the 1980s. But the show's overall drift leans
more toward playfully ironic personal themes and some whimsical, if effete,
sorts of formalism. Hockney and Allen Jones are typical of these personalistic
proclivities.

Hockney, who dyed his hair blond and moved to L.A. after art school, is famed
for his playfully shimmering swimming pool scenes and pseudo-School of Paris
portraits. Jones is known for his garishly expressionistic views of the sexes,
as we see in his Marriage series, in which fetishistic flashes of flesh
and clothing appear in manic maelstroms of gender innuendo.

It may all smack of decadence, but this too was a sign of the times. Any period
in which the most vital prints took the form of acerbic psychedelic art gives
us something to ponder.